Search the blog

Archives

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has finally made a public appearance after 40 days out of sight, visiting a new housing complex and sporting a spiffy new cane. When asked by a reporter about his lack of public appearances, Kim replied, “I overslept. One of my lackies must have forgotten to set the alarm. Now go to prison and do hard labor for the rest of your life.”

A company in Cuba that manufactures homeopathic medicines, cleaning products and dietary supplements is moving into the cologne market. Labiofam is releasing two scents: “Ernesto” and “Hugo,” in honor of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Formulated by a French company, “Ernesto” is a woodsy and refreshing citric scent with notes of talcum powder while “Hugo” is softer and fruitier with hints of mango and papaya. The scents took 1½ years to formulate because the original version of “Ernesto,” which featured more authentic notes of sweat, jungle, and gunpowder, oddly didn’t fare well in the focus groups.

Two hundred sixteen experts who attended the Food Safety Summit in Baltimore last April got sick after eating lunch. It turns out the Chicken Marsala that was served was contaminated with Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens) which can cause diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea, headaches, chills, vomiting and fever. Hopefully they’ll be more careful at next year’s event, which has the theme: “Hey, let’s go out for lunch!”

Dennis Rodman has apologized for his recent behavior in which he sang Happy Birthday to Kim Jong Un before an exhibition game in Pyongyang, North Korea, and suggested that Kenneth Bae, an American citizen who has been held in North Korea since 2012, may have done something to deserve his sentence of 15 years of hard labor. Rodman blamed the outburst on drinking, stress, and a what he admits was a “very bad Rob Ford imitation”.

Wal-Mart stores in China are recalling “Five Spice” brand donkey meat snacks that were sold in some of their stores because DNA testing has shown that it might not all be donkey. In fact, some of it might be contaminated by – gag! retch! blech! – fox meat. Chinese shoppers are rightly outraged. After all, when you want a piece of ass you want a piece of ass.

China, living up to its reputation as the country that always puts a positive spin on everything, has released a list of five “surprising benefits” of smog. As published on the China Central Television’s website, they are:

1. It unifies the Chinese people.

2. It makes China more equal.

3. It raises citizen awareness of the cost of China’s economic development.

4. It makes people funnier.

5. It makes people more knowledgeable (of things like meteorology and the English word haze).

The article was pulled, but then the Global Times published an article claiming air pollution might help the Chinese military by obscuring sight lines, which can reduce the effectiveness of surveillance and weapons systems.

There will be more. Heck, everyone knows smog takes your mind off only being able to have one child, clouds your brain while you spend all day doing the same mundane task making iPhones for people who pay more for the phone than you make in a month, and helps you to not see North Korea and its missiles aimed at you while Kim “The Kid” Jong-un playfully holds a big red button in his hand.

Pope Benedict may have worn red shoes, but Pope Francis, it turns out, worked the red rope. In an interview recently, he admitted that when he was a teen he worked as a bouncer in a nightclub in Buenos Aries. It’s not really so different from being Pope — people are still confiding in him and trying to convince him they should be allowed to end up someplace where they think angels hang out.

The question around the Vatican these days is: WWLD. Yes, What Would Lesus Do? It seems the Vatican has pulled 6,000 medals honoring Pope Francis from the gift shop shelves because they mistakenly call Jesus “Lesus.” Made by the Italian State Mint — motto: “It’s lust a jittle mistake” — the coins will be remade and reissued, which will no doubt make Pop Franceis very happy.

According to a headline on CNN.com, “Scientists grow mini brains from stem cells.” The article goes on to say, “They’re not actually functioning brains but the parts are there,” which is why the researchers have named the first one Miley.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, having been sentenced to 35 years in prison, issued a statement saying, “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.” He went on to ask that, “starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun.” In order to dispel any confusion, Chelsea Clinton has asked that from now on she be referred to as Bradley.

The Catholic wire service Zenit says Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI didn’t retire from the papacy because he was getting old and weak as he originally said, but rather because “God told me to.” Probably good that he took the advice if he’s getting messages like that, though one has to wonder what he would have done had god told him to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Two hundred thirty-five million Mexican children who returned to school on Monday learned an important lesson—you can’t believe everything you read. It turns out that 235 million of the elementary school textbooks provided by the government’s Education Department were riddled with at least 117 errors, including misspellings, grammar and punctuation mistakes, and a map that put the popular tourist city of Tulum in the wrong state. “We’ve learned our lesson,” one of the book’s editors said. “How were we to know that using Google Translate on an American textbook wouldn’t work?”

Prince William and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, formerly known as Kate, have come up with a name for The Baby of the Year — George Alexander Louis. Not surprising since they both loved Seinfeld, especially GeorgeCostanza (played by Jason Alexander) and Julia LouisDreyfus. Jerry Seinfeld is reportedly upset that he wasn’t a part of the Royal Name, while Kramer remarked, “What am I, a hipster doofus? Giddyup!”

When ProPublica submitted a Freedom of Information request to the NSA asking for information contained in the agency’s emails, they were told that the National Security Agency doesn’t have the technology to do it. “There’s no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately,” NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker said last week. Yes, this is the same agency that’s amassing records of all our phone calls so they can, well, search through them. Makes you wonder if we really have anything to worry about.

When Chris Reynolds checked his PayPal account recently he was surprised to see that he had been credited with a payment he wasn’t expecting — $92,233,720,368,547,800. I’ll save you the trouble of counting the places. That’s $92 quadrillion, which is 1,300 times greater than the annual gross domestic product of the entire world. Unfortunately Reynolds, who buys and sells car parts online, saw that his available funds were zero. So much for paying off his bills, the national debt, Willie Nelson’s tax bill, Donald Trump’s hairspray tab and still having the more than $91 quadrillion left over as mad money. Just to rub it in, the next day PayPal sent him a notice asking him to update his credit card information since the card had expired. I hope Reynolds enjoyed it while he didn’t have it.

The FBI announced that they found no remains in their latest search for Jimmy Hoffa in a field in Oakland Township, Michigan. They did, however, find the long missing Pauly Shore. Unfortunately they couldn’t find any sign of his career.